Ligon Duncan has been the senior minister of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi since 1996. In 2004, Dr. Duncan was elected the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America – the youngest minister to serve as moderator in the denomination’s history. Read more…
Thanks Mark (more on T4G and Complementarianism)
Your post on the complementarian question was excellent Mark. I've waited a week before posting to follow up, in part because I didn't want anything else to deflect attention from your reflections on that important matter. There were dozens of comments left here at the T4G and the conversation was all over the place in the blogosphere.
Two notes before I make a few remarks. First, as I was preparing to post tonight, I think I noticed new formatting for the T4G site going up. Looks good. Way to go team. Second, I plan to start blogging through our T4G statement to give some context to it. Hope you, C.J. and Al will join me.
Now, as to the issue of younger conservative evangelicalism and complementarianism, I think your observations are spot on - though I want to point out that guys like Harry Reeder, Kent Hughes and Ray Ortlund (who were in that meeting and who are over 50) have led brilliantly and faithfully in the whole area of biblical manhood and womanhood, not to mention our own dear C.J. who has been on this issue like white on rice for years. Once again, C.J. shows his world-class discernment!
Allow me to reiterate a few points you made, as a public expression of solidarity, and to explain why I think this is so important, and warranted inclusion in our T4G statement.
One, the denial of complementarianism undermines the church's practical embrace of the authority of Scripture (thus eventually and inevitably harming the church's witness to the Gospel). The gymnastics required to get from "I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man," in the Bible, to "I do allow a woman to teach and to exercise authority over a man" in the actual practice of the local church, are devastating to the functional authority of the Scripture in the life of the people of God.
By the way, this is one reason why I think we just don't see many strongly inerrantist-egalitarians (meaning: those who hold unwaveringly to inerrancy and also to egalitarianism) in the younger generation of evangelicalism. Many if not most evangelical egalitarians today have significant qualms about inerrancy, and are embracing things like trajectory hermeneutics, etc. to justify their positions. Inerrancy or egalitarianism, one or the other, eventually wins out.
Two, and following on the first point, the church's confidence in the clarity of Scripture in undermined, because if you can get egalitarianism from the Bible, you can get anything from the Bible. Paul may be excruciating to read aloud and hear read in a dominant feminist culture, but he's not obscure in his position! In 1 Timothy 2:11-12 he says, "A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." Elsewhere, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, we find the confirming parallel to this previous pronouncement: "The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." These verses (and many others) are uncomfortably clear and certainly politically incorrect, and though some of us may be consoled by "exegesis" that shows that they don't really mean that women can't preach, teach, rule in the church, yet there remains this nagging feeling that such interpretive moves are the victory of present opinion over clear but unpopular biblical teaching. Cultural cooption of the church's reading of the Bible, robs the church's ability to speak prophetically to the culture and to live distinctively in the culture, which in turns undermines the church's Gospel witness.
Three, because the very ideal of equality championed by egalitarianism (whether secular or Christian) is a permutation of a particular strand of Enlightenment thought, and because this particular ideal of equality is actually alien to the biblical anthropology and ethic, whenever and wherever it is read into the text of Scripture and its principles are worked out consistently, there is a competition with a biblical view of manhood and womanhood. For instance, try to find this view of equality in Genesis 1 - it's just not there. Consequently, commitment to evangelical egalitarianism opens the door for two competing but incompatible ethical norms and ideals within the individual, family and church. If the egalitarian impulse wins out, the church is compromised precisely at the point where paganism is assaulting the church today. For, as Peter Jones has brilliantly demonstrated, paganism wants to get rid of Christian monotheism by getting rid of the Creator-creature distinction. And one way paganism likes to do that is through gender confusion. Hence, the bi-sexual shaman, the sacred feminine, goddess worship, etc. Paganism understands that one of the best ways to prepare the way for pagan polytheistic monism over against the transcendent Creator God of the Bible is to undermine that God's image in the distinctiveness of male and female, and in the picture of Christ and the church in marital role distinctions, and in the male eldership of the church. Egalitarianism is just not equipped for that fight, and in fact simply capitulates to it.
Four, when the biblical distinctions of maleness and femaleness are denied, Christian discipleship is seriously damaged because there can be no talk of cultivating distinctively masculine Christian virtue or feminine Christian virtue. Yes, there are many Christian ethical norms that are equally directed and applicable to male and female disciples, but there are also many ethical directives in the NT enjoined distinctly upon Christian men as men and Christian women as women. Furthermore, the NT (and the Bible as a whole) recognizes that men and women are uniquely vulnerable to different kinds of temptations, and thus need gender-specific encouragement in battling against them in the course of Christian discipleship. Evangelical egalitarianism, fearful as it is that any acknowledged difference between men and women could set the stage for inequality of role or status, is utterly unprepared to help the believer with these distinctive commands or temptations. Egalitarian discipleship of Christian men and women has, then, an inherent androgynous bias. But that is not how God made us. He made us male and female. Thus Paul warns Christian men against the soul-peril of "effeminacy" without in any way criticizing (and, indeed, admiring and encouraging) the "femininity" of women. We need masculine male Christians and feminine female Christians, and that kind of discipleship requires an understanding of and commitment to complementarianism. Hence, denial of complementarianism compromises Gospel discipleship.
For these reasons and more, Mark, I think we were right to "deny that any church can confuse these issues without damaging its witness to the Gospel." But we'll have a chance to say more on this later.
Posted on June 6, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
About the Gospel (4)
Mark, it was great to be with you in Philly on Monday and Tuesday. C.J. and Al -- wish you'd been there with us. I'll miss fellowship with you guys on Friday night though, but will pray God's blessings on your time and planning. Mark, thanks for the CDs! And thanks reminding us of that great comment from John Piper on productivity at T4G.
Now, I'd better get productive and produce some more Spurgeon quotes, about the gospel. These are some bracing thoughts addressed to hearers of the gospel and preachers of the gospel.
"The hearing of the gospel involves the hearer in responsibility. It is a great privilege to hear the gospel. You may smile and think there is nothing very great in it. The damned in hell know. Oh, what would they give if they could hear the gospel now? If they could come back and entertain but the shadow of a hope that they might escape from the wrath to come? The saved in heaven estimate this privilege at a high rate, for, having obtained salvation through the preaching of this gospel, they can never cease to bless their God for calling them by his word of truth. O that you knew it! On your dying beds the listening to a gospel sermon will seem another thing than it seems now." CHS
"Do you know, my dear unsaved hearer, what God’s estimate of the gospel is? Do you not know that it has been the chief subject of his thoughts and acts from all eternity? He looks on it as the grandest of all his works. You cannot imagine that he has sent his gospel into the world to be a football for you to play with–that you may give it a kick, as Felix did when he said to Paul, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee" (Acts 24:25). You surely cannot believe that God sent his gospel into the world for you to make a toy of it, and to say, as Agrippa said to Paul, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" (Acts 26:28), and then put away all thought of it out of your souls. You cannot even speak of it irreverently without committing a great sin." CHS
"Avoid a sugared gospel as you would shun sugar of lead. Seek the gospel which rips up and tears and cuts and wounds and hacks and even kills, for that is the gospel that makes alive again. And when you have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let his gospel soak into your soul." CHS
Posted on May 23, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
About the Gospel (3)
Today's quotes about the Gospel, come from the prince of preachers, C.H. Spurgeon.
"Never lose heart in the power of the gospel. Do not believe that there exists any man, much less any race of men, for whom the gospel is not fitted." (CHS)
"Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus." (CHS)
"If God does not save men by truth, he certainly will not save them by lies. And if the old gospel is not competent to work a revival, then we will do without the revival." (CHS)
"On Christ, and what he has done, my soul hangs for time and eternity. And if your soul also hangs there, it will be saved as surely as mine shall be. And if you are lost trusting in Christ, I will be lost with you and will go to hell with you. I must do so, for I have nothing else to rely upon but the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived, died, was buried, rose again, went to heaven, and still lives and pleads for sinners at the right hand of God." (CHS)
And one quote, not from Spurgeon, but which fits will with this last thought:
"I acknowledge myself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure and without hope, except in his sovereign mercy." (from the Presbyterian vows of church membership)
Posted on May 19, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
About the Gospel (2)
Yesterday I started a series of great quotes about the Gospel, from some giants of Christian ministry. We continue piling on the gems in this post.
"The gospel is a glorious declaration of the mighty acts of God when he invaded this earth in the person of his eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ." (John Blanchard)
"The gospel is not 'God loves us,' but 'God loves us at the cost of his Son.'" (Derek Thomas)
"As there is only one God, so there can be only one gospel." (James Denney)
"The church is the fruit of the gospel." (Hywel R. Jones)
"We have an unchanging gospel, which is not today green grass and tomorrow dry hay; but always the abiding truth of the immutable Jehovah." (C.H. Spurgeon)
"The gospel begins and ends with what God is, not what we want or think we need." (Tom Houston)
Posted on May 18, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
About the Gospel (1)
Mark, great post on C.J. as Bunyan. So true. His message at T4G continues to pastor me daily.
Mark and I have been together at a Pastor's meeting in Chicago this week, and I've enjoyed fellowship with Mark, as well as benefitted from Mark's wisdom. It was also good to talk to you by phone tonight, C.J. Wish you were here! And happy anniversary - late.
Now, I've still not answered C.J.'s Gospel question, and I'm waiting with abated breath to hear about the non-laser-building bears in Al's woods, but I'll ramp up to my Gospel post by feasting you with a series of great quotes about the Gospel, from some giants of Christian ministry.
"If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself." (Augustine)
"The whole gospel is contained in Christ." (John Calvin)
"Whenever the gospel is preached it is as if God himself came into the midst of us." (John Calvin)
"There is nothing attractive about the gospel to the natural man; the only man who finds the gospel attractive is the man who is convicted of sin." (Oswald Chambers)
"A gospel that elevates man and dethrones God is not the gospel." (Will Metzger)
"The world has many religions; it has but one gospel." (George Owen)
"The man who does not glory in the gospel can surely know little of the plague of sin that is within him. (J.C. Ryle)
"The revelation of the gospel is to a world that is already under indictment for its universal rejection of God the Father." (R.C. Sproul)
"If the Lord's bearing our sin for us is not the gospel, I have no gospel to preach." (C.H. Spurgeon)
"The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ." (C.H. Spurgeon)
"When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed." (C.H. Spurgeon)
Posted on May 17, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
A Prayer for Ministry, from Thomas Chalmers
Amen C.J.!
Thomas Chalmers was one of the leading lights of the Scottish evangelical awakening in the nineteenth century. From October of 1841 to September 20, 1846, on Sunday afternoons, Chalmers wrote a series of devotional-expositional-supplicational thoughts on each chapter of the New Testament, starting with Matthew 1 and going to Revelation 22. He wrote them, apparently, simply for his own edification, but they have become a source of edification to many a Gospel minister. I am happy to say that Solid Grounds Christian Books is producing a new edition of them! Get it.
Meanwhile, I'll share with you a taste of the riches contained therein. Having begun his notes (written in long hand with no erasures, strikeouts or corrections in any of the volumes!) with the arresting words "All history is subservient to the great work of Redemption," Chalmers is meditating on Matthew 1, on a Lord's Day afternoon (in October of 1841), and journaling—as was his habit over the last six or so years of his life and as described above—and he observes: "And under what an endearing and comforting title is it that he is first announced to us—Jesus the Saviour—and from what? He saves us from our sins—not the guilt of them only, but also the power of them." Then Chalmers records his personal prayer in light of this truth: "—Realize upon me, O God, the whole of this salvation. Give me a part, both in the justifying righteousness which this Jesus hath brought in, and in the sanctifying Grace which He sheds forth on all who believe in him, that I may be regenerated as well as reconciled; and that admitted to the pardon which has been sealed by His blood, I may furthermore be purified—and, meet for the Master’s use, may become one of His peculiar people, zealous of good works." May that be our prayer too.
Thomas Chalmers, Sabbath Scripture Readings (Matthew I), in The Posthumous Works of Thomas Chalmers, Vol. IV, edited by William Hanna (Sutherland and Knox: Edinburgh, 1848), 1-2.
Posted on May 8, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
T4G Hopes
Mark, you are so right – who knows what will come from T4G, but we all long for God to be glorified and his people helped as a result. And you are certainly right that we all want to see the Lord’s work cross-fertilized.
Two things are for sure. 1. We long to see a renewal of the old evangelical alliances, around the Gospel, and a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring, Christ-exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-life-style-pursuing, self-denying, self-giving, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing preaching, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the Gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for so many of these words and thoughts).
2. And we want to see them leading strong evangelical churches who, while they hold as faithfully and biblically as they know how to certain doctrinal distinctives not shared by all other biblical evangelical churches, band together for the Gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-loving, Bible-preaching, Scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep biblical evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing Disciple-making, biblical church leadership teaching-obeying – for the display of God’s glory in the churches.
May the Lord raise up such a ministerial fraternity – not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but rather on the basis of shared conviction of the truth and Gospel forbearance in the areas where we differ; not to the detriment of our convictions regarding our distinctives in faith and practice in the local churches and families of churches we serve, but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that are truly a witness to grace in this passing age, a display of the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.
Posted on May 3, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
Thanks for coming
To all of you whom came to Together for the Gospel, from as far away as India and Australia, from a dazzling variety of churches and backgrounds, almost 3000 of you, young and old (though half or more were in your 20s and 30s) - thank you. What a privilege it was to serve you, to sing with you, to weep with you, to talk with you, to laugh with you, to praise God with you, to recommit ourselves to the blazing center of Christian ministry, with you.
I'll have more to say soon, but my heart is too full and the rest of me is too tired! On behalf of Mark, Al and CJ - thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Posted on April 29, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
F.F. Bruce on the Gospel
I still haven't answered CJ's questions, but I'm working my way towards a post. Menawhile, I thought these seminal summarizing thoughts from F.F. Bruce, on the Gospel, were worthwhile as a starting point of reflection (though certainly not beyond improvement) regarding the shape of the NT teaching on the Gospel. Bruce says:
The NT use of Gk. euangelion, “joyful tidings,” “good news,” has an OT background in Is. 40-66, where the LXX verb euangelizomai, “bring good news,” is used of the declaration of Jerusalem’s deliverance from bondage (Is. 4:9; 52:7) and also of a wider announcement of liberation for the oppressed (Is. 61:1, 2). This last passage provided the text of Jesus’ inaugural preaching at Nazareth: he gave notice that it had been fulfilled as he spoke (Lk. 4:17-21). Jesus’ message was otherwise described as the gospel of the kingdom of God. Its contents are set out in his parables, where the Father’s loving bestowal of mercy and free forgiveness on the undeserving and the outcasts is presented with vividness and warmth.
With Jesus’ death and resurrection a new phase of the gospel begins. The preacher becomes the preached one: his followers, whom he commissioned to preach the gospel after his departure, proclaimed him as the one in whom the Father’s pardoning grace had drawn near. “The gospel of God. . . concerning his Son” (Rom. 1:1-3) tells how, in the coming and redemptive work of Christ, God has fulfilled his ancient promise of blessing for all nations.
For the first generation after Christ’s ascension the gospel was exclusively a spoken message; the earliest written record of the gospel appeared in the 60s.
Only one saving message is attested by the NT. The “gospel to the circumcision” preached by Peter and his colleagues did not differ in content from the “gospel to the uncircumcised” entrusted to Paul (Gal. 2:7), though the form of presentation might vary according to the audience. Paul’s testimony is, “Whether therefore it was I or they [Peter and his colleagues], so we preach, and so you believed” (1 Cor. 15:11).
The basic elements in the message were these: 1. the prophecies have been fulfilled and the new age inaugurated by the coming of Christ; 2. he was born into the family of David; 3. he died according to the Scriptures, to deliver his people from this evil age; 4. he was buried, and raised again the third day, according to the Scriptures; 5. he is exalted at God’s right hand as Son of God, Lord of living and dead; 6. he will come again, to judge the world and consummate his saving work.
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Two things strike me immediately: (1) first, the observation that "with Jesus’ death and resurrection a new phase of the gospel begins" is important, and perhaps overlooked in some current discussions; (2) the influence of C.H. Dodd on Bruce's summary has perhaps contributed to an underplaying of the Gospel's relation to the forgiveness of sin (unless you read the euphemistic "to deliver his people from this evil age" as sufficiently expressive of this emphatic NT point). Leon Morris supplies the corrective to this in "The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross."
Posted on April 21, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
The Christian Response to Christ's Resurrection
Thanks Al for a great post on the Gospel (and don't you love C.J.'s answer to his own questions?!), and for pointing us to Mark's important article on the atonement. Thanks Mark for the Spurgeon quote.
I quoted John Piper yesterday, during the morning services (from his Easter sermon in 2000). It's a great example of a Gospel response to the power of Christ's resurrection. John tells the story of Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards - two elderly missionaries who had just then died in Cameroon in a car accident. John says: "Ruby [was] in her eighties and Laura in her seventies. Ruby gave all her life in medical missions among the poor. Laura, a doctor who practiced in India for many years and then here in the Cities, was giving her retirement for the bodies and the souls of the poor in Cameroon. Both died suddenly when their car went over a cliff."
John then asks: "Was that a tragedy? Well, in one sense all death is tragic."
The following is John's answer:
Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards, at their age, could have been taking it easy here in retirement. Think of tens of thousands of retired people spending their lives in one aimless leisure after another - that is a tragedy. The fact that Jesus Christ took authority to make Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards valiant for love and truth among the poor and lost and diseased of Cameroon when most Americans are playing their way into eternity - that is not tragedy. And that he took them suddenly to heaven in their old age in the very moment of their love and service and sacrifice, and without long, drawn-out illnesses and without protracted and oppressive feelings of uselessness - that is not a tragedy. Rather, I say, "Give me that death, O Jesus Christ, Lord of the universe, give me that life and that ministry and that death!"
This is why Jesus came. This is why he was crucified. This is why he rose from the dead with all authority and promised to be with us to the end of the age - to create a people whose sins are forgiven, and whose hearts are full of the love of God, and who are so emboldened by the triumphant Christ, that they spend their lives with risk and sacrifice and love to help others know and enjoy the greatness of Christ forever and ever.
Is this not what you were made for? Is there not something in your own soul that witnesses to you that this is true and worthy of full acceptance?
Posted on April 17, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Consumerism and the Local Church
Another helpful and convicting post Mark. Thank you. Among other things it reminds me again how much continuity there is in our situation from the late nineteenth century to now. With all the pomo hubbub about how everything today is totally different, what always strikes me to the contrary when I'm reading the 19th century leading lights is the similarity of our challenges and situation.
And now for something completely different! (As Monty and the boys used to say). No, actually, it's related -
I'm looking at a newspaper article about a church in a major metropolitan area in the Southern United States that is building what they term "the finest presentation facility" in their county. A number of things about the story caught my attention, but especially what they are calling their worship facility: the experience center.
It's interesting, eh? - the Protestant move from sanctuary or meeting house, to worship center, and now - experience center.
There are a number of positive things about the congregation's emphasis noted in the article: high view of the importance of the local church, desire for evangelism, desire to serve others. But the very name of the event facility, coupled with their advertising mailer, which emphasizes that those who attend Easter Services "won't be bored" are parabolic of the continuity of our situation with the nineteenth century, aren't they?
After all, Spurgeon was having to talk about the difference between "feeding sheep and amusing goats" then. And today, despite the emerging/emergent protest against this supposedly locked-in-the-70's style of ministry, it is still a driving force in church-life today.
I do not think that any discussion of our approach to Christian theology, ministry and worship in the United States in our time can afford to overlook the overwhelming power and influence of the consumer mindset (on both those who plan and lead ministry in the churches, and those they are trying to reach). It must be the starting point of our contextual discussion, and its overwhelmingly negative effects must be considered. While it is all the rage to say that all things are new now and that "postmodernism" must inform everything we do in theology, ministry and worship, there is a far more powerful and concrete force crouching at our doors. We ignore it to our peril.
Posted on April 12, 2006 in Culture | Link to this Post | Comments
Checking In from Twin Lakes
C.J., what a great post! Dripping with helpfulness and insight. Thanks.
Al, no, it's not clerical garb, which I don't wear(!) [though I do don a plain, black, Geneva gown on Sunday morning - but that is utterly bereft of liturgical symbolism, and is merely the dress of a teacher of the Word, from Reformation times], it's just an orange, short-sleeve shirt,buttoned to the top, and my accompanying conference name-tag. Had to wear orange - I was lecturing on "Is the Reformation Over?" Didn't want to be unclear in my sympathies.
Mark, Twin Lakes was wonderful. Paul Curtis did a fine job representing 9Marks - and I loved the new 9Marks video. Excellent. Professor David F. Wells (of Gordon-Conwell) did a brilliant overview of "Above All Earthly Pow'rs." Professor Douglas F. Kelly (of RTS Charlotte) preached our opening sermon on "Christian Worship Overthrows Satan" - a glorious exposition of ordinary means of grace ministry and the confidence we have in God's use of his appointed means. C.J., you will love this sermon! Pastor Mike Campbell of Redeemer Church here in Jackson preached on "Christ-centered Leadership" from John 13 (some of you may know that he preached with much blessing at Bethlehem Baptist Church at the DGM Pastor's Conference this year) - it was simply glorious. Pastor Terry Johnson (of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah - which, btw, has one of the most beautiful meeting houses in all of Christendom) gave a brilliant paper on the importance of reading the Scripture in public worship (a practice now almost lost in evangelicalism, except for a a few perfunctory verses that serve as the pastor's jumping off point). R.C. Sproul preached a powerful message on the Eclipse of God. And Derek Thomas (of RTS, ref21, etc) singed our hairs with a bold word from Mark 10:17-31 and the Rich Young Ruler, asking if we are really faithfully following Jesus' example in evangelism - or would we do anything to get the Rich Young Ruler into our churches. CDs and DVDs are available.
More on the Gospel soon. Counting the days until T4G.
Posted on April 7, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Merciful Providence
Well, C.J., I'm still delinquent on answering your questions, but I've not given up hope yet. However, the Twin Lakes Fellowship gathers here tomorrow through Thursday, so who knows when I'll get the answers posted. Meanwhile, what about Florida? I'm stunned. I would have guessed UCLA after what they did to LSU. The game was so in control Noah was winking at the cheerleaders the last eight minutes. Wow.
Mark, David Wells says hello, and was asking about Connie and the family. I gave him a quick update (and, per your instructions, on your behalf, invited him to preach soon at CHBC!). He seemed amused at the ecumenicity of a Presbyterian, asking a Congregationalist to preach at a Baptist Church at the behest of a Southern Baptist pastor!
By the way, Mark. Your post on the Apparent Piety of Numerical Goals was simply brilliant. Thanks.
On an entirely different note, a heartbreaking pastoral situation here has had me thinking about God's kind, though sometimes inscrutable, providence (especially as I have watched a hurting family demonstrate Gospel trust in a sovereign God in the most difficult of circumstances). Calvin reminds us:
"It is essentially necessary, if we would fortify our minds against temptation, to have suitably exalted views of the power and mercy of God, since nothing will more effectually preserve us in a straight and undeviating course, than a firm persuasion that all events are in the hand of God, and that he is as merciful as he is mighty. The man who disciplines himself to the contemplation of these two attributes, which ought never to be dissociated in our minds from the idea of God, is certain to stand erect and immovable under the fiercest assaults of temptation; while, on the other hand, by losing sight of the all-sufficiency of God, (which we are too apt to do,) we lay ourselves open to be overwhelmed in the first encounter."
Posted on April 3, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
Ryle on Heart Religion
C.J. and the T4G crew. Please forgive my non-response to your great questions. I've been buried under some pastoral issues here of late. C.J., your question is crucial - literally - and I really want to give a helpful response. Perhaps by Monday.
Meanwhile, feast on this insight from Bishop J.C. Ryle on true heart religion:
What is the first thing we need, in order to be Christians? A new heart. — What is the sacrifice God asks us to bring to Him? A broken and a contrite heart. — What is the true circumcision? The circumcision of the heart. — What is genuine obedience? To obey from the heart. — What is saving faith? To believe with the heart. — Where ought Christ to dwell? To dwell in our hearts by faith. — What is the chief request that Wisdom makes to everyone? "My son, give me thine heart."
Posted on March 30, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
The Final Four
C.J., thanks for your great post on Sunday preparation, reminded me of M’Cheyne's words "A well-spent sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth . . . we love to rise early on that morning, and to sit up late, that we may have a long day with God" and also of Baxter's "What fitter day to ascend to heaven, than that on which He arose from earth, and fully triumphed over death and hell. Use your Sabbaths as steps to glory, till you have passed them all, and are there arrived."
I have delighted to see how droves of people have responded with appreciation to your posts (yes, we read all of the comments!). Now, in this post, I am responding obediently to your call for Final Four predictions (although this seems a precarious exercise for two athletically-challenged Southern Baptists and an increasingly pudgy Presbyterian). To engage you in the area of College hoops, given your knowledge, experience, skills and extraordinary gifting would seem to put us at a significant disadvantage!
Nevertheless, in the spirit of rushing in anyway, I offer the following. Much as I hate to admit it (because I'm an ACC guy, not a Big East guy), UConn and Villanova are proabably the two best teams in College BB (though UConn has yet to play a full game) this year.However ‘Nova will lose to BC in their Regional bracket (why? because the ACC needs them too!). But FLORIDA will go to the Final Four after dispatching Georgetown and BC. That's a pick for our good friend, Randy Stinson, Executive Director of CBMW, who is a Gator.
UCONN will beat one of the MO Valley survivors in their Regional Final, if they can outlast Washington - the only team still standing in their region who can beat them.
MEMPHIS will win a titanic contest over UCLA (all four of those teams left in that region are hot, aren't they? it will be sad to see them go), who will edge 'Zaga to get the right to lose to Memphis. That's a pick for my buddy David W. Hall - a Tiger Fan.
And then there was DUKE, sorry C.J. The Banes of Mahaney will crush LSU (leaving only one SEC team remaining in the tourney) and will sail into the Four with a win over Texas (one of the two most-feared "twos" in the Dance).
Hey, anyone want to talk about the collapse of the Big Ten?
Posted on March 21, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Twin Lakes Fellowship
Thanks for the post on the CHBC Weekender, Mark, and for your reiterated invitation to me to tell folks about the Twin Lakes Fellowship. I had some surgery on Wednesday of this week, so have been out of the loop in terms of posting though I have checked the T4G blog regularly.
The Twin Lakes Fellowship is a ministerial fraternal for kingdom extension. We want to encourage church health and growth by commending the "ordinary means of grace." This year (April 4-6 in Florence, MS, at our church's conference center) we are delighted to have David F. Wells (doing an overview of his Above All Earthly Pow'rs and particpating in a roundtable discussion), R.C. Sproul, Mike Campbell (who preached for John Piper's conference this year), Doug Kelly, Derek Thomas, Terry Johnson, and more speaking at the TLF.
The Twin Lakes Fellowship was established about eight years ago by the elders of the First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS (and receives support and oversight from several other PCA sessions and ministers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina). This fellowship is designed to pursue a twofold purpose: (1) to encourage ministers and churches to promote the work of church planting through their local congregations and (2) to encourage ministers in their personal growth in grace, so as to maximize their effectiveness in promoting the work of the Gospel.
If I might express it another way, the Twin Lakes Fellowship aims to be an American version of the Crieff Brotherhood in Scotland, except with a specific, positive ministry focus: to encourage church planting through a variety of specific, practical means. The purpose of the Twin Lakes Fellowship is thus positive and Spiritual. It is also unique, in that it is concerned to promote some sense of common ministerial bonhomie, and renew our energy for historic Reformed theology and ministry.
How exactly do with aim both to encourage church planting and to encourage ministers? Well, for example, consider the following. As we gather annually, we attempt (on the church planting side): (1) to promote a heart for evangelism and church-planting among ministers through emphasis, exhortation and example; (2) to encourage some gifted pastors to consider becoming church planters themselves; (3) to encourage gifted seminarians to consider becoming church planters; (4) to encourage an ordinary means of grace approach in the Gospel ministry of church plants/ers; (5) to bring church planters into direct contact with ministers and elders from potential support churches; to church planters themselves opportunities to report, appeal and instruct, as well as to encourage them in their labors; (6) to bring potential church planters into direct contact with ministers and elders who are looking for church planters for specific works; (7) to bring missionary church planters into direct contact with ministers and elders from potential support churches; generally there will be one missionary church planting ministry represented and the rest will be North American church planting; (8) to address practical issues regarding the export of historic reformed theology and church life in a postmodern, multicultural and pluralistic society. (9) to hear from denominational servants and various presbytery spokesmen about church planting strategies and opportunities; and (10) to produce and disseminate literature and resources (books, pamphlets, video, audio, email list and distribution, and internet-available material) to foster church health and growth in the work of church planting.
On the ministerial encouragement side, we attempt: (1) to refresh ministers and glorify God through worship and the ministry of the word; (2) to promote a Gospel brotherhood in the work of Christian ministry through fellowship; (3) to encourage disheartened brethren; (4) to introduce to one another committed men with a shared theological vision; (5) to provide for a time of relaxation and recreation for servants of the Lord; (6) to encourage a pan-Reformed brotherhood by inviting like-minded men from various presbyterian and reformed backgrounds and denominations, both from the region and nation and from around the world; (7) to network with other bodies and organizations for mutual edification, encouragement and stimulation (like 9 Marks); (8) to address at least one critical theological issue per annum, via lecture and discussion, that is impacting the reformed and evangelical community; and (9) to promote theological ministry commitments which are biblical and reflective of solid Reformed convictions.
Posted on March 17, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
March Madness, Nine Marks and Carl Trueman
CJ, sorry about the Terps. But, hey, they got an NIT #1. Only a Duke loss will be able to assuage and console you now. Speaking of sports, why don't you share with us your wisdom on the following: How have you used sports to cultivate biblical masculinity in your son? Given our culture's propensity to unduly and inappropriately elevate sports figures, how have you helped your son cultivate discernment and guard against idolatry? What are some of the things you say to your son prior to his athletic events? What are some other pieces of advice you would give to fathers regarding sports and character development in their sons?
Mark, I just finished listening to your 9Marks interview with Carl Trueman - excellent! Folks you don't want to miss this one. It's entitled "Was the Reformation a Mistake?" on the 9Marks CD (though the conversation is actually significantly broader than that topic). Mark is the best theological interviewer in the English-speaking world, and puts Charlie Rose, Larry King, and Tim Russert in the shade, IMHO.
Posted on March 12, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Reporting from the Ligonier National Conference
I'm in Orlando today through Saturday for the Ligonier National Conference (located on the campus of First Baptist Church, Orlando, FL). John MacArthur gave the opening address on Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church, and it was brilliant. John gripped our hearts from the beginning with the brave and tragic story of the pre-Reformation reformer, John Hus, and never let go. He pounded home the way this indisputably true doctrine is undermined in modern church practice, and showed the practical, pastoral significance of this truth. It was vintage MacArthur. Then, just afterwards, R.C. Sproul shared a little known story from the ordination of Luther that tied him to Hus. You need to hear this for yourself. Talk about sovereignty! Get the audio!
Sorry about the slow blogging this week. I've been at a dead run. And though I've had the fleeting pleasure of brief phone conversations with Mark, and email exchanges with C.J., we haven't been communicating much via the blog. Adrian Warnock has even raised the alarm on our absence in the comments! Well, here's a start at making amends.
Mark's Luther ecclesiology questions are good. I agree with Mark that Marty Marty has rightly assessed Luther's attitude towards the finer points of church polity. As to Mark's second question, though I have great sympathy with the spirit of Luther's view, I myself am committed to a jure divino [by divine command] approach to church government (as is Mark). That is, we believe that the Bible sets down certain unalterable principles of the government and order of the church, for all places and times, and that we ignore them to our peril. I believe that God has established a biblical form of church government, appointed the precise offices of the church, explained their jobs and qualifications, directed how the congregation is to relate to those officers, insisted that Jesus is the only head of the church, and more. The Bible doesn't tell us everything about the government of the church, but it does tell us the most important things.
OK, Al and C.J., chime in.
Posted on March 9, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
Shepherds' Conference Afterglow
It was a blessing to be with John MacArthur and his team, and the good folks of Grace Community Church at this year's Shepherds' Conference. I have never been so well-taken care of in my life (thanks to Steve Hall to for carting me around everywhere!). The singing was marvelous. The spirit was joyous and encourgaing. I just wish I could have been there for more of the conference, and had had more time to spend with the brothers who were gathered there for this great pastoral confab.
Before some of the highlights slip my mind, I'll share them here:
* Dan Dumas is a genius at organization and a gracious host. Thanks so much friend for all you did and gave. I am your debtor.
* I was able to meet a colleague whom I have long admired but never met - Steve Lawson. What a dear, brave and godly servant of the Lord. Steve is just a few miles down the road in Mobile, and I hope to fellowship with him in days to come. BTW, I am now an unabashed fan of his wife Anne - who has been duly installed in my "Real Reformed Women's Hall of Fame" after hearing Steve speak about her, and meeting her for myself.
* R.C. Sproul brought his A-game and his message on Romans 1 on Friday night was powerful and timely.
* Al, Mark, CJ and yours truly - after a wonderful T4G dessert gathering on Friday night - were surprised to receive four handsome presentation pieces of Spurgeon (for CJ), Luther (for Al), Edwards (for Mark) and Calvin. How kind. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
* Al Mohler's Saturday morning talk was vintage Al. Densely packed exposition, deftly applied, which searching cultural analysis, engagement and critique. He just needed another hour!
* It was great to meet Phil Johnson in the flesh for the first time. Just wished we could have had more time to talk. He and my brother John got to have lunch on Saturday, I think.
* Seeing my brothers for a few moments. John and Mel both work for Ligonier Ministries. I even got to fly back from LA to Atlanta with my brother Mel, and walk to our next departure gate together. Fun.
* Staying up late talking with Mark, Al and CJ on Friday night. Can you say "more fun than a barrel full of monkeys"?
* Meeting Lance Quinn for this first time. He and I both serve on Peter Jones' CWiPP board, but are never there at the same time! I've admired and followed Lance's ministry for some time now, so what a privilege to meet him.
* Got to hug Tom Ascol.
* A number of you asked to whom I was referring in my last post when I mentioned CHBC and CLC and GCC and BBC as examples of strong Reformed churches with excellent evangelistic track records. Well, CHBC is none other than Capitol Hill Baptist Church - pastored by the finest preacher-theologian-evangelist of our time, Mark Dever. CLC is Covenant Life Church, where Josh Harris is now pastoring, and where C.J. Mahaney so ably served. SGM, or Sovereign Grace Ministries is a good example of a family of churches that are superb at the practice of evangelism and emphatic in embrace of the doctrines of grace. Grace Community Church is GCC - what more need I say?! And BBC is Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, where John Piper serves. These congregations take a back-seat to no one when it comes to church health, zeal for the lost, effective witness, commitment to the great commission and joyful embrace of reformed theology.
Posted on March 5, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
On my way to L.A.
Thanks Mark. Can't wait to see you, Al and C.J. Hope to be there early afternoon. Full day here in Jackson, but had a blast teaching Covenant Theology at RTS this afternoon (a course I teach each Spring). Covered the Noahic covenant and started into the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 12 and 15. Rich passages, filled with God's grace.
Posted on March 2, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Great Luther Quote, Mark! And more Packer info
Mark, thanks for the Luther quote. It is so spot on for our situation today. It reminds me of Calvin's statement that he who would be Christ's disciple must first become teachable.
Now, still more of you out there in T4G-land have let me know that the Packer chapter from which I quoted is available online. Justin Taylor tells me that you can get it online here. Another T4G friend, Steve, wrote in a comment that it could be found here. Read and enjoy!
Posted on March 1, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
Reformed Evangelists
Thanks Mark, for the excellent questions and sorry for my slow reply. Let me give some quick answers and then I’ll come back and elaborate later.
First, some Calvinists are considered poor evangelists because they are. We could both give examples. This is a point I’ll take up later.
Second, Calvinists are often considered poor evangelists by anti-Calvinist evangelists because they have been taught that Calvinism quenches evangelistic zeal, and undermines the motive for missions, and those same anti-Calvinists have simultaneously mis-identified certain man-made approaches to evangelism with the evangel itself and with biblical evangelism, and thus have viewed the use of these man-made methods as the final measure of faithfulness in and zeal for evangelization.
Third, Calvinists are often considered poor evangelists because of historical ignorance. The standard fare of anti-Calvinism (Calvinism kills evangelism and missions) so often served up in the SBC and in wider evangelicalism is, of course, wrong. Dead wrong and demonstrably wrong. The greatest evangelists and missionaries of Protestant era have been Calvinistic or Reformed. That is, they have embraced and preached the doctrines of grace. Whether it is Bunyan or Spurgeon, Carey or Nettelton or Whitfield or Duff or Stott, that you are talking about – the Baptist tradition, the Congregational tradition, the Anglican tradition, the Presbyterian tradition and so on – find the hall of fame evangelists and missionaries and you’ll find folks who live, breathe, teach and preach the doctrines of grace.
Fourth, Calvinists ought to be better evangelists because we (only by God’s mercy) have gotten a clearer hold on the Bible’s teaching on man’s sin, God’s grace, Christ’s cross and free salvation – the very heart of message of evangelism. Those who have been forgiven much, love much, and love to tell the story. And we realize the depth of our own sin, the greatness of God’s grace to us, the cost of Christ’s work and the freeness of God’s grace shown to us – so we love to tell others about it.
Fifth, I well remember your remark to me a number of years ago, that "Calvinists will be the last people sharing the Gospel." I agree with you wholeheartedly and that statement is true at so many levels (again, I want to explore it some more, later). For instance, in the last fifty years in evangelicalism (as its Calvinistic moorings slip) we have seen an erosion of commitment to the exclusivity of Christ and the absolute necessity of the Gospel for salvation. This is the consequence of an encroaching, incipient, Arminianism. It has led many an Arminian to stop sharing the Gospel. The evangelical Calvinist, on the other hand, will be the very last one to cave in to universalism in its various forms, or to accommodate the spirit of the age. The evangelical Calvinist is a supernaturalist and a particularist in ways that the Arminian is not, and thus is less vulnerable to the siren call of the spirit of the age that compromises bold Gospel witness.
Sixth, this being said, the growth of the PCA (and other strong reformed churches like CHBC and CLC and GCC and BBC) is not because we are better evangelists but because we have a better evangel (that is, a more biblical one) and a gracious, sovereign God who is at work changing hearts by his Spirit. The PCA motto has been from the beginning – "true to the Bible, the reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission." Not a bad slogan. In the PCA though, we earnestly desire to see more adult professions of faith, and in no way are patting ourselves on the back or resting on our laurels. God gets all the glory. The rest is our fault.
Seventh, reformed types (in the SBC and PCA and elsewhere) are more likely to be able to find their converts than non-reformed types (who might have to put out an APB to locate 75% or more of their decision-makers). So, multiply Shiflett's results for reformed church growth by at least four. The reason for this is that we reformed folk are interested in making disciples (see Matthew 28:19), not simply getting someone to pray a prayer or sign a card or raise a hand or walk an aisle, etc.
Posted on February 28, 2006 in Evangelism | Link to this Post | Comments
The Source of the Packer Quote
Gobs of you have been asking for the source of the Packer quote. Thanks for your interest. It can be found in his famous introduction to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Probably on the first page or two, if you have the Banner of Truth edition of that book. Or, it can be found in that same introduction, serving as chapter 8 (entitled 'Saved by His Precious Blood': Introduction to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ) in Packer's book A Quest for Godliness (Crossway, 1990), pages 125-126. The book is called Among God's Giants in the UK, I think.
Posted on February 28, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
Packer on the recovery of the Gospel
J.I. Packer is surely right when he says that "one of the most urgent tasks facing evangelical Christendom today" is "the recovery of the gospel." "Why so?," you ask. Here's his answer.
"There is no doubt that evangelicalism today is in a state of perplexity on and unsettlement. In such matters as the practice of evangelism, the teaching of holiness, the building up of local church life, the pastor’s dealing with souls and the exercise of discipline, there is evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with things as they are and of equally widespread uncertainly as to the road ahead. This is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similarly enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty.
"We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be “helpful” to man— to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction— and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was “helpful,” too— more so, indeed, that is the new—but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its center of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the center of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach people to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.
Posted on February 26, 2006 in Gospel | Link to this Post | Comments
To my non-Donatist Baptist Friend, Mark
Thanks for the kind comment about the posts on reading, Mark. And thanks for your questions. Sadly, the answer is that sometimes Presbyterians are lax in our attitudes towards church membership, though when we are it is a betrayal of our historic understanding of biblical polity rather than a consistent working out of it.
I often tell my interns that you and I are aiming for the same thing in terms of a healthy local chuch. We want to see a regenerate, baptized adult membership - all of whom can be accurately characterized as Christian disciples. Now, of course, the differences come in how we view the status of the children of believers in the local church, but our goals for cultivating adult discipleship are the same.
As for Donatism, no, of course not. Baptists are simply asking that people be baptized and have a credible profession before they come to the Lord's Table. That is the Christian position. The debate is not over that being an unreasonably stringent requirement, but what constitutes baptism. But, you know this better than me!
Posted on February 24, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (7)
As we bring this consideration of the importance and conduct of pastoral reading and study to a close, I want to ask you a question. Do you pray as you study? Do you pause to praise God for a glorious truth about himself that you learn along the way in your reading? Do you stop frequently to confess your sin and beg pardon as you are convicted by the truth of God’s word even as you read of some saint possessed of a virtue that you have not cultivated, or read a biblical warning against a sin that is a sin of your heart and life too? Do you seek forgiveness for those revealed sins even as you read? Do you intercede for others in relation to the truths you are learning. Prayer and reading and studying go together, belong together!
You may be reading secular history and realize that God’s providence used a common grace exercised in an unspiritual man to be a turning point in the story of nations - this might move you simultaneously to doxology to God in the manner of Romans 11:33, or to lament in prayer that you have not so cultivated that same character quality, though a child of God, or to thank God that in some measure by his grace you have seen some growth in that trait in your own life, or intercede for God to raise up Christians with such mettle.
Do you know what William Carey was reading when God placed a burden on his heart for taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth? The final volume of an account of the adventures of the great English explorer, Captain Cook. Reading of far-off places and strange peoples didn’t lead Carey into a fantasy dream-world of being an adventurer. Instead it led that son of a cobbler to think how those peoples needed Christ, how they needed the Gospel, and burdened him to take it to them. Dear friends, we ought to read with such a spiritual eye.
You might be reading a book by a leading theologian with much helpful in it, but with subtle and dangerous errors, traps laid for shepherds and sheep alike, and this might set you a-praying for your own soul ("Lord God, guard my heart from pride, keep my soul from error, grant me discernment, I hold something in my hand now that could set me off your path, protect me and others, O Savior, keep other shepherds from stumbling, protect your sheep from false teaching, grant repentance to this errant writer").
You might be reading a "soul-fatting" book, but all along thinking of its application to others, especially your flock and your culture, and suddenly you are arrested by the Holy Spirit as to its piercing truth for you. Turn that into prayer. "Lord God, here I am to learn my sin, here I am to learn of your grace and call to me, here I am to learn how you would have me live. O take the log out of my eye, dear Lord, before like a surgeon I attempt to extract slivers from the eyes of others." Or "My heavenly Father, this is a grace I need to know. It is not just something I need to tell my people. I myself need it desperately, because I need you desperately. Grant it in your rich mercy."
True Gospel study ought to be turned into prayer
All our study ought to be turned into prayer, and made to serve the interests of sanctification—ours and that of others. This just reminds us again of the importance of an experiential knowledge of God to our theological learning. Without a true, saving, covenantal knowledge of God, study is bound to go wrong on us. This alone urges upon us the importance of prayer and the Holy Spirit in our study. In prayer we show our utter dependence on God for the attainment of true knowledge. And only by the teacher, the Holy Spirit, do we get true knowledge and the true knowledge of God. Both of these realities must permeate our whole approach to study. This is one reason for the profound statement of Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge."
May God raise up a host of Gospel "mighty men" in our day, committed to the authority of Scripture, firmly persuaded of all its great doctrines, masterful in their grasp of gospel truth and on fire to proclaim it, characterized by warm-hearted godliness and steady holiness, prayerful and careful in pastoral duties, and diligent to keep studying to show themselves approved, that the Church would be built up, her walls enlarged, Christ exalted and God glorified.
Posted on February 22, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (6)
Today, I want to think with you about some of the goals of reading and studying – what we aim at in studying. Now as to goals in study, obviously among them will be God’s glory, your personal growth in grace, the edification of others, and the increase of your own capacities to teach and preach. In this connection it would be good to remember the three famous dicta of Herman Witsius (the famous seventeenth century Dutch theologian and pastor) who said: "No one teaches well unless he has first learned well;" "No one learns well unless he learns in order to teach;" and "Both learning and teaching are vain and unprofitable, unless accompanied by practice." These words are well worth pondering, as is Witsius' little classic On the Character of a True Theologian (Greenville: Reformed Academic Press, 1994).
Additionally, let me mention these as proper goals for your study. One appropriate goal in study is to acquire true and useful information or knowledge. Primarily, of course, you will be concerned to get knowledge that consists of the knowledge of God revealed in the Scriptures. But you will also properly want knowledge of God's creation, including ourselves, our times, the world, and our flock. The major source of this knowledge will of course be special revelation, but our study will of necessity include basic insights from general revelation.
A second aim of your study will be the acquisition of the ability to employ the right use of that knowledge which you gain in study. The sort of knowledge of God which can be gained by book study is not an end in itself but a means to an end. That end is the glory of God and union with Him, from which flows the benefit of communion with Him. We learn about God in order that we might know Him, that is, enter into relationship or fellowship with Him. To repeat this idea another way: saving knowledge is covenant knowledge – the knowledge of communion and fellowship with the living God. Propositional knowledge is an essential element of that saving knowledge, and hence imperative in all Christians' spiritual walks. But it is neither the only element of saving knowledge, nor the end/goal of our study. May God grant you not only a firm grasp of saving truth but also a right understanding and employment of its proper uses.
A third goal of your study will be the development of your analytical skills. You need to develop your abilities of discernment to the point that you are capable of synthesizing knowledge, critical thought, and possessed of good judgment. For you will be a walking reference point for your flock. Moreover, every sermon or lesson that you prepare will require you to be discerning and analytical of the text (in the original and translation), the tools (dictionaries, commentaries, lexicons, and other literature), the context (when and where the lesson is being taught, what are the burning trends, issues, sins, and worries of the day), and the congregation (where are they spiritually, what do they need, etc.).
A fourth aim of study ought to be an ongoing refreshment of our desire to learn, obey, worship, and pastor. We should be thirsty for knowledge of the word of God and of his world (including his people and their context). Not all of us will be equally interested in the same things, but each of us should be hungry for commanding knowledge of something. We must also be hungry to put this knowledge to work in the service of obedience. True, some more "practically" oriented folk want to skip the thinking and get to the doing, but that kind of zeal without knowledge is prideful and potentially destructive. We ought to burn in our hearts to worship and most of all to pastor. But all these desires need stoking. Study can help add fuel to the fires of our devotion.
A fifth aspect of our aim in learning out to be to enable our capacity for self-criticism and to increase our ability to exercise appropriate repentance. It is a sober work to which we are called and the dangers to our souls (and those of our congregations) are many, should we be careless in our vocation. We are called to be stewards of the mysteries of God and one day we will give an account of our conduct to the Almighty. Spiritual self-examination and self-criticism (evidences of a repentant spirit), and openness to rebuke from others are absolutely essential if we are to avoid pitfalls in the Christian ministry.
Sixth and finally, we ought to aim in our study for the cultivation of a warm, full, natural, biblical, practical piety or godliness. This piety should be characterized by reverence to God, love of neighbor, seriousness of purpose in one's calling, and determination to holiness. My desire is that you will be, as a servant of the Word, by God’s grace (to borrow an apt summarization from David Wells) "God-centered in your thoughts, God-fearing in your heart, and God-honoring in your life." And if you have a moment, please pray this for me, too.
Posted on February 22, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (5)
Now we come to the question of motivation: why should you study and read? Let me encourage you to be self-conscious about your personal motivations for study. Many a good man has fallen prey to false motivations and thus has lost the real or full benefit of ongoing study. For one thing, your ongoing study should not be motivated by the desire to gain a certain status. Many seminaries and institutions of higher learning appeal to pastors to do "advanced" course work that is hardly advanced by any realistic standard because they offer an impressive sounding but vacuous degree title to those who complete the course. Don’t fall prey to that. The goal of learning is knowledge, not a status.
The British have had a much healthier attitude about academic degree titles than we have here in America (although I think we are finally having a baneful effect upon even them in this area). The great F.F. Bruce, for instance, had the equivalent of an American undergraduate degree (he had a Scottish MA - kind of like an American summa cum laude BA) and yet was rightly recognized as a first order scholar in his field. His lack of a "PhD" didn’t matter. He knew more than a roomful of PhDs. I, personally, don’t give a hoot about what title a man has. If he does not possess right and useful knowledge, wisdom and good judgment, he is of little value to the church as a teacher. By the way, this is just one area in which I have great admiration for CJ. He has great discernment, and he cultivates that discernment in those he mentors. This is something sadly lacking amongst some evangelical PhDs (thus the sad expression: "that was an argument that only a PhD could fall for").
But back to my main point. One motivation that ought to impel your study is simply the desire to learn. To learn the truth. To acquire true and useful knowledge. There are very few times when it is okay to be greedy in life; but in learning we ought to be "greedy" to learn, because truth is God’s and we ought to want to know it.
Furthermore, we ought to be motivated to learn in order to be a help to the church. Not infrequently have I encountered Christian ministers who, by much study, considered themselves very sophisticated and "above" the average churchgoer. Such an attitude is unbecoming in the extreme (and, interestingly, is not often found in those who have truly first-order minds). But the faithful shepherd studies precisely to be a help to the people of God, however humble they may be. We want to learn in order to be serviceable to the church.
Along the same lines, you ought to be motivated to learn in order to be helpful to other ministers and churches. Study and read and learn so that you can be a blessing to other Gospel ministers and Christians. Your knowledge is potentially a help and encouragement to fellow ministers grappling with a specialized area of knowledge that they don’t know so well as you. Maybe you’ll become very familiar with the best academic literature about Islam, not only so that you can teach your people and bear witness yourself, but also to help other ministers who don’t know as much about what is now the chief organized religious rival to global Christianity. Or maybe you’ll become an expert in the Puritans, not only so that you can be edified through that excellent material, but also so that you can disabuse others of the considerable and negative mythology which surrounds this whole field of study, and introduce ministers and other Christians to the goldmine to be found in those writings. You get my point. Be motivated to learn in order that your learning may bless the larger church.
This is one way I benefit from my friendships with Mark, Al and CJ. Al is an expert in so many things, and I love to sit and listen to him share his gleanings on everything from moral philosophy, to modern Roman Catholicism (and by the way, I don’t know anyone who knows contemporary Roman Catholicism better than Al, R.C. Sproul and David Wells), to literary theory, to cultural analysis, to architecture. He is a polymath. But he uses that knowledge to serve the glory of God and the church. That’s his motivation.
I love to hear Mark talk about the Puritans, and ecclesiology (I don’t know a Protestant more widely read in the doctrine of the church than Mark), about the doctrine of atonement, and preaching, and a hundred other things. His reading becomes a blessing to me when he shares it. I grow in knowledge, just by listening to him.
And then there’s CJ. No advanced academic degree but an unusually wise and gifted brother. CJ has theological instincts that are lacking in some of the smartest people I know. He and I can go from talking college hoops (and we can tell you in an instant the two ACC teams that played the greatest, most perfect, non-NCAA tournament game ever! Do you know it?), to reflecting on the vital importance of biblical manhood and womanhood, and then suddenly he may begin with all humility and utter un-self-consciousness to share with me rich gleanings from his personal study and reading. I never fail to be amazed by his ability to put his finger on the crucial issue in the area we are discussing. And I am always blessed to sit at his feet and learn.
Of course, I could go on. There’s Gerald Bray, who knows more about Eastern Orthodox theology than anyone on the planet. There’s Sinclair Ferguson who has absorbed the truth of the Marrow Controversy. There’s Phil Ryken who has made Thomas Boston a part of himself and ministry. There’s John Piper, who not only knows Romans 9 like Paul, and who communes with the genius of Edwards, but also fellowships with a number of the great figures of the church each year - from Athanasius to Machen. Or Derek Thomas on John Calvin’s pastoral preaching on Job. And Peter Jones who knows neo-paganism better than neo-pagans.
But it’s not just these well-known men from whom we can learn, and from whom we can be blessed. We can learn and bless others too. My Minister of Discipleship, Brad Mercer, knows Edwards and Lewis far better than do I, and I love to listen to him talk about them. Sam Hensley, one of my church members and a local pathologist, knows the literature on medical ethics like nobody’s business. My former students Guy Richard and Hunter Bailey can teach me things about Samuel Rutherford and Fraser of Brea that I didn’t know.
All of these people bless others with their learning. Now it’s time for you to do the same. Read up. Learn. Become a blessing and encouragement.
So, why should we study and learn? For God’s glory, for our growth in the knowledge of his truth, for the blessing of the church, and to be an encouragement to other ministers. There are most certainly more motivations to study than these. But take these as suggestive.
Posted on February 21, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (4)
Mark, you are out of the blocks early and strong this morning. Thanks for both the posts. Though I wouldn't suggest that we add "Humility" to the canon, I do recognize the vital importance of that grace to pastors, and all Christians - and to myself chief among all. One of the first things you ever told me about CJ, Covenant Life, and pastors of Sovereign Grace was how impressed you were by their evident humility. I can't think of a higher compliment for Christians. Since that time, I've had the privilege of experiencing their Gospel-humility myself. And it is so encouraging and inspiring.
Now since, personality-wise, I suffer from an almost terminal lack of insecurity, the Lord has lovingly given me plenty of reasons for humilty. His greatest gift on this count has been my wife - who has a built-in sniff detector for pride and arrogance (she can pick it up at 500 yards, upwind). I admire her humility (a trait she has, though incredibly accomplished, just like her father and brother, who are world-class business leaders and Christian gentlemen without an ounce of pride about them). Anne inspires me to aspire to humility, precisly because she values the biblical characteristic of humility.
But now, back to books and study. Today, I want to take up a a relatively mundane but potentially important subject - when to read and study. For most of us, this is liable to be a challenge. Today’s minister, by definition, is something of a jack-of-all-trades. He is often viewed as the chief administrative officer, the chief executive officer, the staff hand-holder, the chief visitor, the head preacher/teacher/counselor, the public relations liason, the key denominational representative of the local congregation, and more. It is flatly impossible to do a good job at all of this (which is one reason I live by the motto - "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly"). So when a minister tries to do everything, his study usually gets squeezed out by the tyranny of the urgent. That means you are going to have to plan carefully when to study, and then how to protect that time.
Three main challenges will be how to deal with your officers, members and family in regard to the timing and protection of your study. You will need to devote some time to cultivating in your officers a sense of the prime importance of your study time (if they do not already appreciate its significance). I am blessed with officers who fully appreciate how important it is for me to have time to study, but not all ministers are so fortunate. If your officers are unsupportive in this way, or just unaware of the importance of it, first pray that God would grant them hearts to support you in this area.
Then, as opportunities arise through the cultivation of Christian friendship, share with those most sympathetic to you and begin to explain how you understand your calling and what things are necessary to the accomplishment of it - especially the requisite study. For one thing, you could compare what they have to do in their workday (including the unglamorous but essential behind-the-scenes-type work) to what you have to do in order to teach and preach. Help them appreciate the ways they benefit from your having adequate study time. Then explain and solicit their support for the ways you are going about setting and protecting that time. If need be, bring in another minister or elder from another church to speak at an officer retreat about his matter. They need to be your champions with the people on this.
This is serious business and I know many fine men who've been pushed to the edge by a lack of officer-support in this area. One dear friend had officers who would insist on coming to the church every morning of the week and chatting and drinking coffee with him all morning long. He did visitation in afternoons, and so they had effectively robbed him of all his time of study. He asked them to help him on this, but to no avail. It's no surpise that he is no longer at that church.
With regard to members, when they call for an appointment and ask to speak with you, I have found only a few very sanctified souls gracious enough to be satisfied by a secretary responding with "he’s unavailable right now, he’s studying." People naturally think that their question or issue of the moment is more important than a dusty old book the pastor is reading. They can take offense at being put off for your study time. So, I would suggest that your assistant protect your study time by simply saying "he’s unavailable at this time." That should probably be the standard answer whether you are counseling, visiting, leading a staff meeting, writing a sermon or studying. That way the caller doesn’t have the opportunity to personally judge whether his or her issue outweighs your need to study.
Now family is a different matter. My wife is extremely supportive of my ministry. Especially when it comes to pastoral duties like emergency counseling or hospital visits, she is unfailingly accommodating of my taking the time to do them, no matter how disruptive they are to the family schedule. But even she has a hard time resisting interrupting if I’m studying at home and something comes up in which she needs my assistance. So balancing family time and study can be a challenge for us. You will need to work through this issue so that your wife can become comfortable with the rhythm and amount of your study time, and thus support what this means for the family schedule. One way I handle this is to do my study at home before my family is awake or after they have gone to sleep, and then to keep all my other study time at the church office.
Needless to say, reading and study time should not be wasted on email (you will have to devise a strategy so that this doesn’t rob you of valuable hours), theological discussion rings (which sometimes simply pool ignorance), meandering on the internet or taken to the neglect of other important pastoral duties. This is a problem with many ministers, especially those who are more introverted and shy away from the "people-responsibilities" of ministry.
By the way, I always carry photocopies of commentaries with me so that I don't have to lug fifteen books around and can still read them anywhere/anytime (at red lights, while waiting for breakfast and lunch appointments to arrive, while making my coffer in the morning before anyone is up, or during any other period of just a few empty minutes that could be used profitably). The copies of a pericope, like Ephesians 4:1-3, from 18 good commentaries, is less than a half inch thick, and so easily stuck in brief case, backpack, or overcoat pocket. I also make sure that good books are ready-to-hand at home, in the car or wherever I might be. You can think of ways to use these kinds of moments too. Different strategies will work for different folks, but you need to do some thinking about how to redeem your time.
Posted on February 20, 2006 | Link to this Post | Comments
CJ - Average? Not
Those of you who think that Mark, Al and I think that CJ is average, I've got a great deal on some prime real estate just a few miles east of Miami that I'd like to talk to you about!
Indeed, CJ teaches me every time I'm around him, and that's just one reason I love to spend time with him. But - notwithstanding his claims re: my alleged world-classness (I do agree with him about Mark and Al!) and his alleged averageness - CJ raises a number of important points that I want to "amen." Just two quick thoughts here, and then I'll wait with you to read CJ's follow-up post to "Inspired or Discouraged?"
First, I do not want to discourage any minister with these posts on reading. My aim is to encourage and inspire. I don't want to give any pastor the idea that he has to try to keep up with Mark's and Al's prodigious pace of reading. But I do want to commend their judgment as to what to read and their discipline in reading. So, amen to CJ's remarks on this count, and forgive me if I've been discouraging to any of you brothers in anything I've said.
Second, the important thing is that we read good books deeply and wisely, not that we read more than anyone else! All of us can aspire to the former, even if we shouldn't to the latter. None of us can read everything, but we can read more good books than we perhaps have been in the habit of reading in the past.
Thanks, CJ, for the perspective you've put on this discussion - yet another indication of your pastoral wisdom and discernment.
Posted on February 18, 2006 in Leadership | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (3)
Next comes the question of "how you read and study." My comments so far obviously indicate that reading will be a major aspect of your ongoing study as a Gospel minister. That is wholly appropriate, especially in light of our evangelical doctrine of revelation – God communicates to us in propositions (no matter what our poor, confused, postmodern friends think!).
But let me add just a little to this. There are five main ways in which your ongoing study will be aided: reading, reflection, writing, teaching and living. I’ll say no more here about reading, my emphasis on it is already apparent.
On the subject of reflection, I will only say that you need to go to the Puritans to learn their practice of Christian reflection or meditation, in order to gain the most from your reading. Packer has been a great help to me on this. I think he dubs the Puritan approach as "discursive meditation" in order to distinguish it from the mind-emptying, anti-Christian, approaches to meditation prevalent in the new spiritualities. Christian reflection, of course, also includes prayer. And so everything edifying thing we read needs to be turned into adoration, praise, thanksgiving, petition, confession, and intercession.
Regarding writing, let me simply say that there is no discipline more suited to force the mind to organize and communicate the truth than that of writing. If you can’t communicate a truth you don’t understand it. If you can’t communicate it in more than one way you don’t understand it. If you can’t communicate it clearly you don’t understand it. Writing helps in all these areas. A perfect forum to practice this skill is in your church publications. If you find that you have or develop a gift in this area – then share its fruits with your brethren (since your gifts don’t belong to you, they belong to the church!).
In regard to teaching, it—like writing—is (or can and should be) a tremendous aid to self-education and grace-growth. When you have venues to try your hand at it, take them. I’m not just talking about your regular preaching (which will naturally contain a component of teaching in it) or simply speaking of Sunday School opportunities. I’m talking about settings that push you to understand and convey truth at a higher level (lectures before undergraduates, seminary classes, public addresses and the like). When you have those opportunities, take them. And push yourself in preparation for them.
But the thing I want to emphasize here, precisely because it is so often overlooked among those who are devoted to study, is the importance of living to learning. By that I mean on the one hand that one ought to be constantly asking how one’s learning is playing out in one’s life. We should be asking oursevles: "Because of my learning am I loving God more, loving Scripture more, more devoted to Christ, more committed to kingdom ministry, more Christlike, a better Christian husband and father, more loving of my neighbor, more just, merciful and humble, and growing in grace?" Jesus regularly emphasized in his teaching that our doing shows what we really love and believe. Hence our attitudes, actions and priorities in living reveal the secrets of the heart. If your learning is not helping you in your living and pastoring according to biblical standards and emphases, then it is learning gone bad.
By the importance of living to learning, on the other hand, I mean that it is the school of Christian experience under God’s providence that is the testing ground of all true learning. Especially God’s dark providences—suffering, trials, tests, disappointments, "losses and crosses" as the Puritans called them—reveal the extent of our learning. Benjamin Disraeli once said that "Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning." In so doing, he was simply echoing a dictum that can be found from Luther all the way back to the Bible that "Prayer, meditation and temptation [meaning trials and testings] make the Christian." Indeed, Luther put it more provocatively than this, when he said that a preacher is not made by reading books, but by "living and dying and being damned." In other words, God makes preachers in the crucible. Never forget that. God makes a minister of the Gospel by breaking his heart. Isn’t that one thing that Jesus meant when he beckoned us to take up our cross and follow him?
Posted on February 17, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (2)
The matter of "what to study?" is of vital importance for a pastor in a day when so much of the literature peddled on the Christian market is drivel. In fact, if it is in the Christian Top 50, then it unfortunately has a 90 to 94% probability of falling into that category (which means the only time you are going to read it is an act of pastoral discernment and protection of the flock). So we need to purpose to read wisely. Life is too short to waste on unprofitable reading. Al has already given some good thoughts on this, and I agree with what he has said. Here are a few more thoughts though. In addition to substantial fiction, classics, history, humor and things your read just to keep up with culture, the following need to be a part of your diet.
Naturally, you are going to be reading Bible commentaries in preparation for preaching (make sure you're reading the good ones – see Derek Thomas’s The Essential Commentaries for a Preacher’s Library), but you need to plan to read more than just commentaries. There ought to be a part of your reading designed to foster biblical piety, the doctrines of grace, a biblical view of church and ministry, and the challenge to consecrate your whole heart (mind, will and affections) to ministerial study. Packer, Stott, Piper, Wells, Sproul, Ferguson and others have provided us much gold in this vein.
I’m thinking of books like: J.I. Packer’s Knowing God (IVP), a devotional classic that ought to be plundered often; Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (Banner of Truth), foundational for thinking about pastoral care; John Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress (Christian Library), no intelligent Protestant minister should have not read and mastered this book. Another Packer volume, A Quest for Godliness (Crossway Books), is a brilliant set of essays on the Puritan vision of the Christian life. To this we add John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans), the classic popular treatment of the ordo salutis; J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Eerdmans), a must for all modern evangelicals; J.C. Ryle, Holiness (Evangelical Press), one of the great modern devotional books; Horatius Bonar’s Words to Winners of Souls (P&R), Thomas Boston’s The Art of Manfishing (Christian Focus), all of David F. Wells books. You get the idea.
In other words, you want to be reading what the Puritans would have called "soul-fatting" books: works that will increase your knowledge, your love for the Lord and your confidence in Scripture. You will, of course, from time to time read things that are not soul-fatting, but you must never allow this best kind of book to be entirely absent from your normal plan of reading.
Additionally, you will want to listen to good MP3s/CDs (like the outstanding interviews by Mark Dever available at 9Marks Ministries; Ken Myers’ interviews at Mars Hill Tape Library are also stimulating and informative, reformation21 often features great audio interviews; get "The Teaching Company" catalog and listen to the best undergraduate lecturers from across the country on important subject areas). You can listen while you take your daily exercise, or as you are driving in to the church or on the way home, or heading out on a visit. And, if you can’t listen to the whole program, listen to the first ten or so minutes of the Albert Mohler Show everyday (you can listen on XM, the internet or about 75 stations nationwide). Al will catch you up on the most important things of the day, from a distinctively biblical perspective.
Go to conferences (not "how to" conferences, but conferences that feed your soul or make you think: Desiring God, Ligonier, Banner of Truth, Shepherds, PCRTs, Founders Conferences, Sovereign Grace and such). Keep up with current events (glance at the New York Times, read World magazine and Atlantic Monthly, then visit the Arts and Letters Daily website, or the Access Research Network – all of which can be found easily with a Google™ search on the internet) and think hard about the culture (Phil Ryken charts a helpful course for this in My Father’s World [P&R] and He Speaks to me Everywhere [P&R]).
But above all, determine to read and master the great books of your Reformation heritage. Luther’s Bondage of the Will, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Ames’ Marrow of Theology, Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics, John Bunyan, John Owen, B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, C.H. Spurgeon, and Carl Henry. Read the classics, and read primary sources. Mark has already mentioned C.S. Lewis’ famous comments on this in his "On the Reading on Old Books" (which was originally composed as an introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation). His counsel is wise and worth reading in full. Lewis says:
There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.
Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why - the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook - even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united - united with each other and against earlier and later ages - by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
So, one way you can avoid being caught up in the banalities, trivialities and fads of current "learning" is to interact with the best thinkers of the past. Against the backdrop of my call to reading though, remember the wise counsel of Thomas Brooks: "Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices, are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched. If any cast off the study of these, they cannot be safe here, nor happy hereafter. It is my work as a Christian, but much more as I am a Watchman, to do my best to discover the fullness of Christ, the emptiness of the creature, and the snares of the great deceiver."
Posted on February 16, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Pastors - Studying and Reading (1)
Protestant pastors don’t read or study very much these days, and most churches don’t encourage them to do so. There are fewer pastor-readers than ever before (and surfing the web, dabbling in this oddity and that, doesn’t count!). Church members and even officers sometimes have a hard time appreciating how much time a good message from God’s word takes to develop, and furthermore don’t see the importance of the pastor studying anything else than for preaching and devotions. There is a strong dose of anti-intellectualism in our circles and it doesn’t encourage a man to do the hard work of developing the mind and expanding his knowledge.
But precisely because our people are bathed in trivial information in this day and age, they need a shepherd with real knowledge, much discernment and a nose for truth. This knowledge must be acquired and those qualities cultivated, and both require that you become a permanent student. This call to study is, of course, entirely biblical.
The Bible emphasizes the importance of pursuit of sound learning for the wise in general, and for pastors in particular. Proverbs 15:14 says that “The mind of the intelligent seeks knowledge, But the mouth of fools feeds on folly.” Proverbs 18:15 reiterates the principle when it says “The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” Proverbs 24:5, “A wise man is strong, And a man of knowledge increases power,” reminds us of the old dictum “knowledge is power.” I don’t need to tell you that the wisdom literature of the Bible is replete with calls to the believer to pursue knowledge. But the Bible says more than this. It emphasizes that ministers need to pursue study of the truth.
Ezra 7:10 describes this great Old Testament leader in this way: “Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” Hosea laments the want of spiritual leaders like Ezra when it says “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (4:6). The same aspiration and complaint can be found in the last book of the Old Testament: “For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 2:7).
But it is in the pastoral epistles that we find some of the most direct words of instruction and exhortation regarding ministerial study. Paul can say to his Timothy “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Here we have an apostolic directive for a young minister to study with the equivalent exertion and effort of a tireless day-laborer. The true minister is a workman (Paul really likes this metaphor!). He works hard at his task. The true minister is to work hard at study so as to know and preach the Truth rightly.
Furthermore, Paul gives Timothy a sterling example of studiousness from his own practice and priorities. Think of his astonishing request in 2 Timothy 4:13 where he asks “When you come bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments.” Now think of it. Paul is only months away from death. He has written the bulk of the letters of the New Testament. He has a lifetime of ministry behind him. And what does he want to do? Study! Winter is approaching and so Paul asks for his cloak, but more importantly he asks for books and parchments. Though almost at the end of his course, Paul aims to keep learning and growing by spiritual reading.
Nobody has ever uttered a more poignant pastoral meditation on this little verse than C.H. Spurgeon. Here is what he says:
How rebuked are they by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, "GIVE THYSELF UNTO READING."
The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. YOU need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books" — join in the cry.
Paul herein is a picture of industry. He is in prison; he cannot preach: WHAT will he do? As he cannot preach, he will read. As we read of the fishermen of old and their boats. The fishermen were gone out of them. What were they doing? Mending their nets. So if providence has laid you upon a sick bed, and you cannot teach your class — if you cannot be working for God in public, mend your nets by reading. If one occupation is taken from you, take another, and let the books of the apostle read you a lesson of industry" (from Spurgeon’s sermon #542 "PAUL - His Cloak And His Books" in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 9 (1863): 668-669).
Paul is a life learner, and you should be too.
Posted on February 13, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Duke, The Fall and Conversions
Ah, CJ is again lamenting that most undeniable proof of the Fall - another Duke basketball victory. Alas, this one over his beloved Terrapins. And to think that Mark graduated without ever being caught up with the Cameron crazies. Providence - guess that has made his friendship with CJ possible!
Now Mark, thanks for another good post today on conversion. I regularly hear (I'll not say where) evangelism and missions reports, even of the short-term variety, touting staggering numbers of decisions or professions, meaning in the reporters' mind "conversions." I have the same reaction as you express in the post.
One sure fire sign that something short of the New Testament fullness of discipleship is in view is when their is no real, vital and lasting connection of the "new convert" with the local church. The local church often hasn't been involved in witness-bearing to the individual. The individual has not given account of his faith and publicly professed Christ in the midst of the congregation - nor can pastor, elders and people lend confirmation to the evidences of new life. No commitment to an on-going discipleship has been indicated by the person - and often sadly no such discipleship has ever been practically in view by those who were engaged in the initial "evangelism."
With you, Mark, one of my constant prayers for the ministry here at First Pres., is that we would see conversions, and more of them. But I mean conversion in all its glorious, supernatural reality. The Spirit must do it. It is always surprising in light of our spiritual deadness. And it yields not merely a momentary decision and assent to a Gospel presentation, but a grace-endowed, Gospel-rooted, Spirit-transformed, church-shaped life of discipleship.
After all, Jesus told us to "make disciples."
Posted on February 11, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Thanks Mark, Al and CJ
Thanks CJ and Al for your kind words, and to Mark for your good posts. I took the "red-eye" back from Los Angeles, arriving in Jackson on Wednesday morning at 9. I was by God's grace able to have lunch with my wife and son, work all afternoon, preach the Wednesday evening midweek service (on Psalm 87) at First Pres, and teach a Senior High girls' small-group on Reformation and Post-Reformation church history thereafter, before heading home and happily collapsing in my bed that night! I'm grateful for your prayers for strength and stamina, CJ. The Lord heard and answered.
Our Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) Board meeting was most encouraging. The leadership of Professor Randy Stinson of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY) as the Executive Director of CBMW has been superb. Randy has overseen a steady development of the total work of the organization. We met with a number of strategic partners in LA, as we continue to form new friendships and networks in our quest to see evangelicalism resist the cultural capitulation to feminism everywhere evident in so many churches, and to embrace joyfully the Bible's clear and vital teaching on manhood and womanhood in the home and church (a teaching which we designate by the short-hand "complementarianism").
Speaking of which, everyone ought to know about Wayne Grudem's recent book Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions. (Sisters, Ore: Multnomah, and Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press). It is a tour de force. In it, Wayne pours in much of what he has learned from over twenty-five years of close involvement in the controversies over men's and women's roles in the home and church. CBMW hosts an on-line site that allows you to access some of this material, and where Dr. Grudem will answer any "new" evangelical feminist arguments for "egalitarianism." You can find it here.
Wayne was a co-founder and long-time president of CBMW and still serves on the board. He has also taught on biblical manhood and womanhood, in both required general courses and special electives at the M.A., M.Div., D.Min., and Ph.D. level, for the past twenty-five years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and, more recently, at Phoenix Seminary. In addition, he has spoken and debated on this issue who knows how many hundreds of times in both American and European contexts. Wayne sees the book as a culmination of that work. By the way, Wayne is currently research professor of theology and Bible at Phoenix Seminary. He received a BA from Harvard, an MDiv from Westminster Seminary , and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Here are some things to bear in mind about this book. It . . .
* is the product of over 20 years of research on biblical manhood and womanhood by a recognized leader of the "complementarian" position
* clearly and biblically upholds male leadership in home and church
* promotes greater appreciation of male-female equality in the image of God and encourages more openness to women's gifts and ministries in the church
* explains a beautiful pattern for marriage as designed by God
* gives detailed quotations and clear, balanced answers to every leading evangelical feminist author and book in the last 30 years
* explains specific application to dozens of real-life situations in church and parachurch ministries
* answers arguments about specific Bible verses, church history , how to interpret the Bible, cultural relativity , present-day experiences, fairness and justice, and practical application
* contains many pages of Biblical and historical information that cannot otherwise be found in one place, and many new discussions never before published by this author.
* warns of troubling trends in many evangelical feminist writers who undermine the authority of Scripture
* includes the full text of policy statements on women's roles in 41 denominations and parachurch ministries
* never loses sight of the beauty and joy of our manhood and womanhood as created "equal but different" in the image of God.
Buy it. Read it. Live it.
Posted on February 9, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
A Note from LA
Thanks for your follow up post on reading Al. And thanks for your good question Mark. I'll try to scribble a quick thought or two in reply ASAP. Meanwhile, CJ and I are in LA for the CBMW Board meeting. It will be a delight to spend time with you CJ, and our faithful colleagues in CBMW.
Now, by way of encouragement, enjoy this rich quote on the church from Stephen Marshall (one of the famous "Smectymuans" during the lead-up to the calling of the Westminster Assembly):
"All the glory that [God] looks for to eternity must arise out of this one work of building Zion; this one work shall be the only monument of His glory to eternity; this goodly world, this heaven and earth, that you see and enjoy the use of, is set up only as a ship, as a workshop, to stand only for a week, for six or seven thousand years; and when His work is done He will throw the piece of clay down again, and out of this He looks for no other glory . . . . But this piece [the Church] He sets up for a higher end, to be the eternal mansion of His holiness and honour; this is His metropolis, His temple, His house."
Posted on February 5, 2006 in Church | Link to this Post | Comments
Hey, CJ, inquiring minds want to know
When and how did your love for reading begin?
Describe your present practice of the spiritual disciplines and provide us with the specifics, if you would (reading of Scripture, supplemental books, how much time you devote to this each day, etc).
Apart from the daily study of Scripture for the edification of your soul, approximately how much time do you devote to reading each day or week?
What books are you presently reading? CJ, just for fun, how many books did you read last week?
What have been the five to ten most influential books you have read?
Finally, who do you like in the Super Bowl?
. . . 'cause sometimes no. 3 has to kick it back out to no. 1 for the trey from a suburban zipcode.
Posted on January 31, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Checking In
Hello friends. Al, we prayed for you in private and from the pulpit on Sunday. I trust that the funeral services for your dear father-in-law went well, and that the Lord strengthened you to bring his Word.
I am delinquent in beginning to answer CJ's good questions, but I'll make a start (though I won't make an end of it) here. CJ asked:
When and how did your love for reading begin?
I really can't remember exactly. My mother was a former university prof and voracious reader, and my Dad was a printer and publisher, so books have been a part of my life as long as food. I do remember loving to read history and biography (particularly military history) from a very early age. I was captivated by figures like the first Duke of Marlborough (ancestor of Winston Churchill and victor over the forces of Louis XIV, the Sun King, at Blenheim), Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, Robert the Bruce, Oliver Cromwell, George Monck, George Washington, etc.
I also remember being utterly enthralled by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as part of an assignment in AP english in High School. No other work of fiction has ever impacted me like LOTR. I've been lost in Middle Earth ever since. Nevertheless, I didn't study hard until I got to college and my love for reading grew in History and English courses at Furman University. I really did not read advanced academic or historical theology until seminary. For instance, I "met" John Calvin for the first time as a ministerial student, not as a high schooler or collegian. Nevertheless, in high school, I was reading Packer, Stott, Blanchard, Schaeffer, and the like.
Describe your present practice of the spiritual disciplines and provide us with the specifics, if you would (reading of Scripture, supplemental books, how much time you devote to this each day, etc).
My devotional reading practice began in high school with Robert Murray M'Cheyne's Bible Reading Plan, and with IVP's Search the Scriptures. I have used some variation of these ever since. Devotional reading varies from day to day, but I attempt to approach almost all my reading devotionally. Asking questions of the book like: What does this teach me about my God? How does the Gospel illumine this truth, and have I thus rightly responded to this truth? How does this truth expose my sin and need of grace?
Apart from the daily study of Scripture for the edification of your soul, approximately how much time do you devote to reading each day or week?
I really don't know. I'm tempted to say "all too little" -- though I aspire to respond appropriately to the famous admonition of my PhD supervisor at the University of Edinburgh, New College, Professor David F. Wright, who once said: "Time not spent reading is wasted time." And then he added with a twinkle in his eye: "well, almost."
What books are you presently reading?
Well, gobs of commentaries for one thing. I read about 15-18 commentaries along as I preach through a Bible book, so I'm reveling in Ephesians, Numbers, the Psalms and 1 Samuel right now, as I preach through Ephesians and the third book of the Psalms and prepare to begin series on Numbers and 1 Samuel. At any given time I'm reading 5-7 manuscripts for endorsement or review. In addition, I try to keep up with the currents in Systematic Theology, Church History and theological studies in general. I have about 25 periodicals that I like to track as well.
What have been the five to ten most influential books you have read?
Almost impossible to answer, but here's a list of books that have, in one way or another, rocked my world.
1. The Westminster Confession of Faith. Yes, it's only about fifteen pages long (without Scripture references) but it is the apex of Protestant Orthodox confessional formulations and a model of pastoral theology and doctrinal clarity.
2. B.B. Warfield, The Religious Life of Theological Students. Warfield got all over me in seminary, and my admiration grows yearly. He answered Barth a quarter-century before Barth published his views. He out-read, out-thought and out-wrote every man of his generation, but we aren't listening to him. the loss is ours. His Inspiration and Authority of the Bible is magisterial and still unchallenged.
3. J.I. Packer, Knowing God. I first met Dr. Packer as a teenager, at a Bible Conference. I'd read him before I met him, and I've loved his lecturing and writing ever since. His Fundamentalism and the Word of God has been equally influential on me. And his A Quest for Godliness has fueled hundreds of hours of meditation and reflection.
4. Sinclair Ferguson's Kingdom Life in a Fallen World - a popular, devotional treatment of the Sermon on the Mount that still thrills my soul.
5. John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied - grabbed me for the doctrines of grace and has never let go.
6. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism spoke to realities I had already seen with my own eyes in mainline churches. Seminal. As was Ned Stonehouse's biography of J Gresham Machen.
7. J.C. Ryle, Holiness - like Owen's Mortification of Sin - cut me to the quick.
8. David F. Wells, No Place for Truth - provided me with a grid for assessing church and culture that was dramatically important for everything I am tyring to do in the church and the churches today.
9. Calvin's Institutes - reading them through with David Calhoun at Covenant Seminary was one of the great privileges and delights of my life.
10. Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology - still, I think, my favorite ST text.
11. Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, Prescription Against Heretics and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching – all reveal the early Fathers with their best foot forward. Hearing Irenaeus describe the elder who taught him, who was himself taught by John (yes, that John, the one whom Jesus loved, the Apostle), sent chills up and down my spine the first time I read it – and still thrills me at the thought of our closeness to the Apostles.
12. Tertullian – you pick it, is it Against Marcion, On the Flesh of Christ, Apology or what? No one was more fiery in rhetoric, and yet as substantive as Tertullian.
13. Athanasius – On the Incarnation (and CS Lewis’ famous “Old Books” introduction).
14. Luther – On the Bondage of the Will, with Packer’s great introduction.
15. Donald Macleod, Behold Your God, A Faith to Live By, The Person of Christ. The modern theologian who has pastored me most by his writing and preaching.
Finally, who do you like in the Super Bowl? The Steelers. Sentimental pick for Jerome Bettis' and RC Sproul's sake. Usually, I tend to be an NFC kind of guy.
Posted on January 30, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
No Longer AWOL
Sorry, brothers, for my absence/silence of the last few days. We've been getting ready for our annual regional Men's Conference called the "Mid-South Men's Rally" tonight, and I had the Alliance Board meeting in Philadelphia on Monday and Tuesday. Our friend Al Mohler was slated to come here to preach the Men's Rally, but as you know now his father-in-law, with whom he was very close, had a massive heart attack and was gathered to his people around 7 last evening. I've spoken with Al, and we'll be praying as he preaches that funeral and for sweet Mary, his wife, as she greives the loss of her father.
Randy Stinson, professor at SBTS and Executive Director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, will be filling in for Al tonight. Pray for him. More in a little bit.
By the way, I've loved reading your posts. Excellent!
Posted on January 27, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Ephesians and T4G
Mark, thanks for starting the conversation. I've been preaching through the book of Ephesians here at First Pres. in Jackson for about six months (with a break here and there), and we are now in chapter 3. What you say in your post is so right and so Pauline (biblical!) and so under-appreciated by Christians in our time, country and culture. I'll post a few quotes on this, soon, to emphasize some of the points you make.
Posted on January 9, 2006 in General | Link to this Post | Comments
Couldn’t make it to T4G? You attended, but want to refresh on all you learned and experienced? Whatever your situation, let Tim Challies walk you through this jam packed conference. He blogged live as the action unfolded. T4G Archive.
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The T4G Blog is an ongoing public conversation between Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, and Albert Mohler. The authors welcome your comments and may read and respond to them in their posts. However, no comments will be made public on the blog itself.
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